star trek diversity. the fact that that phrase is meaningful is sad.

[cimorene]

Here's a crazy thought I had today: original Star Trek was one of the best racially representative shows in science fiction tv. It certainly did better than TNG (the only black member one of 2 black regulars on the cast was a savage alien - extra points if you've reimagined aliens who originally allegorically represented the USSR as ultra-violent, hulking black guys with a tribal bent; the other's a blind sidekick, essentially, the way he's usually written as Data's bff, whose sole romantic encounter is with one of the vanishingly-few black women they meet! And Whoopi's Guinan is a magical, sexless, ALIEN negro who tells fortunes, provides motherly advice as well as sassy straight-talking, and wears a robey-muumuu thing that I'm pretty sure is also offensive) and DS9 (one Indian, one black guy who is essentially the governor of a huge-ass COLONY and a diplomat, but is somehow militarily ranked below Picard and Kirk; a bunch of aliens, but none of them dark-skinned; of the two newly-introduced races we have Bajorans who are white, and Cardassians who are PAINTED GREY but always played by white people!)

I believe Voyager had a black Vulcan and a North American native (as well as maybe an Asian cast member? Am I remembering that right?). BSG has some racial diversity from what I've seen (I've not watched it myself), but the Stargate franchise has always been pretty abysmal (Teal'c: he's black, alien, AND a magical negro! And let's not start on Ronon and Teyla's treatment in canon).

So I mean, essentially, race has not made progress in mainstream tv sf since 1964.

Comments

[kegom.livejournal.com]

I don't think I can fully agree with you on this; or at least I think there should be a distinction made between the characters and the actors playing them.

I'm thinking mostly about DS9 here, because that's the show I know best, and I find it rather noticeable that of the ten (or so) main characters, only four are supposed to be human: Sisko, his son Jake, O'Brien and Bashir. Sisko and Jake are black and Bashir is very likely of Middle Eastern origins, even if this is never explicitely stated. The only undoubtly white human character in that crew is O'Brien, who is married to a Japanese woman and who's subordinate to the black guy. (On a side note: The reason why Sisko is subordinate to Picard is simply because he's not the governor of the colony, but simply the commander of the space station near the colony, while Picard is an Admiral at that time; so he's indeed below him in military rank. He becomes a diplomat out of necessity, but that doesn't change his military rank.)

In addition to that, the series addresses the topic of race at several points. Not human races, granted, but a large part of the series is about the (at least partially racial) conflict between the Bajorans and the Cardassians and about the Jem'Hadar, who see themselves as a race about all others and see this as a justification to extinguish the "inferior" races.
(And not to mention the episode where Sisko goes back to the 1950's and the whole episode is about him being a black writer struggling with racial discrimination...)


So, on the series/characters level, DS9 has a very racially diverse crew. On the actors level, on the other hand... yeah, you're right there, most of the actors in DS9 are white and so most of the aliens are white too. So, racial diversity when it comes to the acting crew? Really not so much. :/



This being said, however, I'd still say that at least with DS9 race has made progress in mainstream tv sf, simply because it's actually the black guy who's the undisputable hero and the main character of the whole story, which might not do much for the diversity aspect, but a lot for the racial aspect of things, I think. Plus, nearly all of the canon pairings are at least supposed (on the story level at least, if not on the actor level) to be interracial, from O'Brien and Keiko to Dax and Worff.

[kegom.livejournal.com]

* There's missing an "etc." at the end of my post. ^^" Also, hi! *waves* I still occasionally check your journal and happened to come across this post right now. ^-^

[cimness.livejournal.com]

But the problems that I am talking about are at the "actors level". Part of my point is that in sff there is no "characters level" that can be unproblematically separated from the level of the actors for we viewers who are aware that the show is a fantasy; and when it is separated out, the portrait often becomes far more problematic in the things it says about race. Siddig el-Fadil isn't white; he's Sudanese and English. But Julian Bashir is portrayed near enough to white that I'd bet many viewers mentally classify him that way; he's written more or less as British and his race is ignored.

As for Sisko's rank, I would direct you to the huge amounts of reading related to RaceFail09 and particularly to Because there aren't enough spoons in the world (http://inalasahl.livejournal.com/149900.html) by inalasahl, in which she alludes to past fandom racefaily debates about it.

[kegom.livejournal.com]

I can see the point that the actors level can't be separated from the characters level, but I still wonder whether the fact that in the end so many of the characters are essentially white weighs heavier than the fact that the most important guy is black and that in that particular universe racism (especially in the form of the Jem'Hadar) is shown in an exceedingly bad light.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that the show doesn't have problems when it comes to racial issues. There's no way around the fact that a show in the spirit of Gene Roddenberry should really be able to cast a lot more actors of different races than it did; especially a show that puts such a large focus on (alien) racial issues.
Still, DS9 (and Voyager to a certain degree, I think) makes a conscious effort to deal with race issues and that's why I think the Star Trek series have made progress in the last decades.

TOS shows an ideal future, in which all human races are united and equal to each other, and all alien races are equal to each other too, while DS9 shows a much more pessimistic future in which various races still struggle with acceptance and with being acknowledged as equal to other races, which works well as a mirror or perhaps a commentary on what was happening at the time when the series were shot (and what still hasn't changed).

This is far from perfect, especially since there is still the problem of the mostly-white cast and the portrayal of some of the dark-skinned aliens (though it tops TNG in that it at least gave Worff something important to do at last), but the fact that the show didn't just continue Roddenberry's vision of the future but made an active effort to deal with racial issues in a way specific to its own time, shows that there is at least as much interest in these issues as in TOS.